


so help you, son

by VeteranKlaus



Series: Father, Your Honour [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Brainwashing, Gen, Graphic Description of Corpses, Hurt No Comfort, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Pre-Canon, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Sort of? - Freeform, Underage Drinking
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-17
Updated: 2020-08-17
Packaged: 2021-03-06 07:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25959511
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/VeteranKlaus/pseuds/VeteranKlaus
Summary: Number Four is eight years old when he realises that if he wants his father's love and approval, he is going to have to try much, much harder.
Series: Father, Your Honour [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1884181
Comments: 19
Kudos: 157





	so help you, son

**Author's Note:**

> Whoot whoot this is the first part of a three-part series I've been planning for a while, and now deciding to post the first part as a little teaser, solely because I wanted BAMF Klaus and hella angst/whump. It's going to be a Ride.  
> Anywho, massive thanks to Kay for helping me with this part, and massive thanks to everyone who's helped me on this and other/future aspects of it too, I love y'all <3

The ghosts have been a presence in Four’s life for as long as he can remember. The Academy was a busy place; bustling with people that meandered the halls, that stood in the corner of rooms, that made funny noises and funny faces that actually weren’t that funny when he realised the people weren’t laughing, they were wailing. He tried to talk to them, but never got much of a response beyond garbled yelling, sometimes in words that he didn’t understand, words that made the nannies stare at him in wonder. Perhaps that was good, though, because then he got to explain himself to Reginald, explain that no, none of the nannies taught him what ‘fuck’ or ‘bastard’ or ‘I’m going to gut you’ meant – it was the funny man in the courtyard that told him that. This, accompanied with Klaus pointing out to Reginald all the people he ignored and how they looked, led to the discovery of his powers.

Still, it took a little longer for him to realise that these people were actually dead; his mind didn’t fully understand that fact until he got older; until he understood what they yelled; that their guts were spilling all over the floor. His siblings were always curious about what he saw, and Four realised quickly that they truly had no idea what his powers were like. And, honestly, that was probably a good thing.

He tried, of course, to push through it. Reginald started their training very early on; as soon as their powers revealed themselves and they physically could. One, Five, Three and Six were the first to start training, in that order, and then came Four, then Two. Seven never received training; never found out her powers, even if the nannies with twisted necks that hung around her might imply otherwise. Reginald surely would know if Seven had powers and if she had killed people. They held out hope for a while, though, believing that surely she must figure it out eventually, but she just… never did, and they had to accept when Reginald declared her powerless and ordinary. Reginald knew best, of course.

Four was excited to start training. He wanted desperately to control his powers, and while a part of that stemmed from the excitement of doing so, a part of it stemmed from fear. The ghosts were scary. The ghosts were everywhere. The ghosts were loud. Four tried to talk to them; tried to explain how he couldn’t help them, how he just wanted to sleep, but they never seemed to care. Not even when Four lifted his voice high above theirs, yelling louder than they could to ensure that they must surely listen to him, they didn’t care. If anything, it just made them madder. If Reginald could help him control the ghosts, make them quiet, Klaus would throw himself into his training.

He came quickly to the realisation that not even Reginald truly understood what he saw. Surely not, otherwise he would understand why Four always asked if they would figure out how to send the ghosts away. Four always asked, and Reginald always denied his requests.

“Why in the world would you want to supress your own powers, Number Four? The idea is ridiculous. I don’t want to hear such a thing again; you must learn to embrace your powers and become the master of them, or they will control you.”

Four didn’t want to suppress his powers. He saw the progress his siblings were making and he wanted to do the same, he just wished he might get some peace; wanted to sleep easily at night without having Grace repeatedly put him back to bed and stay with him until he finally fell asleep, hours after his siblings had. He told himself, however, perhaps he might learn of such a thing later, if he just kept trying to master control of his powers.

Thing is, his training consisted of conjuring and summoning ghosts. Reginald was only interested in the ghosts in the Academy for the first couple of training sessions, and then he moved on to getting Klaus to summon new ones. It was surprisingly easy to do. Ghosts flocked to him all too eagerly. Reginald asked him to conjure a ghost and he could, even if it left him feeling slightly – wrong. He couldn’t quite name it, but his powers always left him feeling slightly off, as if he’d done something bad, something the world didn’t like; something he shouldn’t do. He supposed dabbling with the dead might feel such a way.

But he could conjure a ghost. He could attempt to get the information Reginald wanted from him, but only if the ghosts cooperated with him. It was after that a problem occurred.

He could conjure a ghost, but he couldn’t get rid of them. Naturally, there were plenty of ghosts around the place already, but each training session brought another one, and another one, and another one, and not a single one of them would leave again. And after coming to Four’s side and realising he could see and hear them, they would cling to his side and demand his attention again; demand help that he couldn’t give to them. His siblings were making progress with their powers and Four was making progress in the amount of different languages he could beg for help and mercy in.

He tries to relay his stress to his father. He tries, he tries every time they train, every time Four breaks the silence at the dinner table when he can’t bear the screaming for much longer, but the only answer Reginald ever has for him is that he is cowardly for trying to be rid of his powers and that he needs to control them better.

So Four trains, and trains, and trains. Until a ghost whispers to him in the dark of night, rancid breath burning his nose, vomit on his lips. “Your Daddy’s bar,” he says. “It helps. Makes it all quiet. Makes you sleep well.”

The bar in the living room is untouched. None of them are allowed near it. Sometimes Reginald is there, and he makes drinks in fancy glasses for himself and other people in suits that come to talk to him. But it is tempting. The ghosts always tell him things, always tell him to do things, the majority being violent and angry and hateful, wanting to cause harm in any way, to himself or to others, but this - this can’t hurt.

So he creeps out of bed, tip-toeing his way downstairs, mindful of Grace, sitting staring at her portraits. He goes to the bar, hoping his footsteps are silent beneath a house full of screams and wails. The ghost directs him with a grin to a bottle, showing him how to twist the lid off. It burns, and he coughs and splutters, gasping, but the ghost is insistent. It’ll make him feel good; do the one thing he can’t. So he drinks, and he drinks, and he drinks, until his head is swimming and the room is spinning and he realises, suddenly, as he slumps to the floor, that the house is completely and utterly silent.

Four realises he has never heard silence before in his life.

His stomach feels heavy, but the ghost was right; it was worth it.

He wakes up in the infirmary the next morning. Grace strokes his hair and asks him why he ever did that; tells him that drinking that could have hurt him. But it didn’t – it helped. He tells her so with wide eyes, and he excitedly tells Reginald this information too. He knows, now, how to get rid of the ghosts, and-

Reginald is not happy. He lectures Four coldly, scolds him, takes his free time away for the month and increases his training.

In fact, they start that night; going to the graveyard Four has gone to before. This cold, dark, loud graveyard, hours from the Academy and from his siblings, all worried about why he was in the infirmary. (Stomach bug, they tell them.)

Instead of coming to a stop at any grave, however, Reginald pushes him deeper and deeper into the place; through rows and rows of crumbling stones and wailing corpses that slowly begin to notice Four’s presence, realising that he is different to everyone else; that he can see and hear them, too, after oh so long of being ignored by the world.

“Dad,” he says, confused and afraid, his head still pounding, stomach still sickly. He knows he ought to trust his father, but he still isn’t entirely certain he did anything wrong in the first place. He has tried time and time again to silence the ghosts, just for a little while, and now he has found a way to do so. Perhaps he shouldn’t have broken into the bar, but it was an impulsive decision, and he’s sure no one, Grace, Pogo or Reginald alike, would give him permission to do so without understanding what the liquor could help him with.

“Your fear of your own powers is childish, Number Four,” declares his father, gripping his arm tightly and marching him past a gasping corpse, crawling out of the ground and clawing at their ankles. At Four’s ankles – they only ever go after him. “It is reckless, and cowardly, and nonsense. You allow fear to rule your life and control you and you wonder why your powers are out of control. Continue like this and all you’ll bring is shame and disappointment to yourself and your family-”

“Dad-“

“You will get over this,, Number Four,” states Reginald, and they come to a stop outside of a small, dark building. From the depths of his coat pocket, Reginald pulls out an old-looking key and slips it into the lock. The door groans as it opens, damp air wafting out to greet them, and Klaus stares into the dark pits of the mausoleum as fear knits his muscles together and steals the air from his lungs.

Ghosts seem to thrive in the dark. They melt from the shadows like monsters, an inhuman mass of claws and bones and screams, and sometimes he wonders if they resemble what Six deals with. Staring into the pit in front of him, Four feels a twist of instinctual fear in his gut, and he looks wildly to Reginald. His father places his hand on his shoulder and urges him towards it, and the darkness reaches out to devour him.

“Dad, wait-“ he blurts, wild-eyed and frantic. “Wait, I – we can do something else-“

Reginald says not another word. He shoves him forwards and Four stumbles over his own feet, down a set of invisible steps, and then he closes the heavy door behind him. Four hears the key groan in the lock and he whirls around. There is a sliver of light seeping in between the doors, the only light he has, and he dives for it; slamming his hands against the door with fear making his veins frozen and his throat thick.

“Dad!” He yells above the distant howling outside. “Dad, please! Let me out!”

There is no response from his father outside, and so he digs his fingers in between the two doors and tries to tear them apart as if he might be able to open the doors by strength alone, but he is no Number One. Suddenly, he longs for his brother. One knows he hates the dark, and One likes to protect his siblings; surely he would help Four if he knew he was stuck in here.

But he doesn’t, and there is no help coming for him, even as other people begin to join him.

His eyes adjust to the darkness and he can make out the tombs and the statues around him; can make out the walls that surround him, and the spider webs and the dust and the cracks and the dancing shadows that flit around him. Four’s back presses against the doors, fingers scrabbling behind him at the doorknob, trying to keep the dancing shadows in his vision, waiting for the ghosts to finally show themselves.

They do, and they are worse than Four has ever seen before.

The mausoleum is obviously old, and so it is only logical that the ghosts inside have been around for a long time, too. And ghosts that have been around for so long without human contact have had their own humanity rotted away. They are nothing more than the shell of their decaying corpses, filled with hatred for the living. Four has encountered a few similar to them in this graveyard, but none quite like this.

They lunge at him like monsters, gaunt and skeletal, hair greasy and eyes shadowed; their fingers twisted into claws, their teeth falling from their gums as their cracked lips part to let out echoing screams that drill into his skull. They hound him, surround him, deafen him. Four throws his hands up to his ears, clamping down, and he scrambles away from them until his back hits another wall and he finds himself in a corner, cobwebs clinging to his shoulders.

“Dad!” He yells, his voice immediately drowned out. He gasps, ragged, and presses himself further back as the ghosts snap by his face like dogs, as if he might be able to disappear into the shadows like the ghosts themselves do. “Dad, please! Let me out!”

He does not understand how this is his training. He doesn’t understand how this might help him suddenly gain control over his own powers and get over his fear of the angry ghosts, and surely his father must know this – surely he must understand this. He doesn’t want to suppress his powers, he only wants to be able to balance them, but at this moment he craves the sick burn in his throat from the liquor the night before.

Four tries to control them; he tries, uselessly, to shove them away, tries to stamp down on the panic that rises within him like a tidal wave. It does not work when the screaming never stops, and so he resorts to screaming as well, and he keeps screaming when he cannot even hear himself. 

He doesn't hear when there's a shuffle on the floor, a small sound out of the ordinary. He doesn't hear it, but he feels fingers curl around his wrists, trying to tug his hands from his face, and it must be Reginald - 

He opens his eyes, and Four sees a ghost's face inches from his, and the ghost's hands are on him. The ghost is touching him. Four's hands are glowing blue, illuminating the mausoleum, shimmering off the ghost's pale skin.

Then there are more hands, grabbing and tugging and pulling and hurting, and Four screams and screams, and all of a sudden the ghosts can't touch him. He scrambles back, cowers in his corner, trembling in fear and pain, and he wails, louder than the ghosts, louder than his pounding heartbeat, drowning everything else out.

He does, however, hear when the door opens again. His throat is sore, his voice a painful rasp, but then the lock in the door clicks and scrapes against the floor as it opens, light slipping inside, and the ghosts falter. Four dares to pry apart his eyelids, looking wildly from the crowd of corpses around him and to the figure in the doorway. A hoarse noise escapes his throat and he scrambles to his feet, sobbing as he rushes to his father in the doorway. His knees ache, his hands sting, skin torn up by the rough walls and floors, and he wants out, out, out; he wants, on some level, his father, and he looks like a knight in shining armour in the doorway, freeing him.

He stares down at Four’s shaking, snivelling form with the calculated indifference Four has become used to, and his hands rest together over the head of his cane.

“This is for your own good, Number Four,” he announces. “This fear of your own powers is irresponsible and nonsensical. You are only afraid because your own cowardice has allowed control to slip from you and it has rendered you weak and useless. Your siblings work to master their powers and you work to get rid of yours. This is going to hurt not only you, but your own siblings, when they trust you in the future to work as a team and you can’t even trust yourself.”

Four has trouble listening through the pounding in his ears; struggles to focus over the burning in his lungs as he sobs and gasps messily for air, tears streaming down his cheeks. Still, he forces himself to listen to Reginald’s words, and he moans, shaking his head rapidly.

He doesn’t want to disappoint, though it seems to be the only thing he is capable of doing. He doesn’t want to end up hurting his siblings. He doesn’t want to be so weak. He had only wanted some peace and quiet, but he realises now that it was a mistake. Had he not been so focused on trying to find a way to stop his powers, but rather focused on controlling them, perhaps he would have figured it out already by now.

“Is that what you want, Number Four?” Asks Reginald, one eyebrow arching up his forehead. “Do you want to waste your life running from your own weakness? Falling behind your siblings and letting everyone down?”

Four had thought that this might have been a punishment. It had seemed to simply never end and he couldn’t understand how Reginald might have thought this could possibly have been successful in helping his control and fear. He had thought that it was purely nothing but a punishment for breaking into his bar.

Now, he thinks he was wrong. Reginald has always known best for all of them and their powers, and he should have trusted that of course Reginald knew what he was doing in his training, but the ghosts truly did terrify Four more than anything. He doesn’t want to spend his life in fear and weakness, nor does he want his weakness and lack of control to come back and hurt his siblings.

“Do you, Number Four?” Asks Reginald again, and Four’s throat hurts too much to vocalise a response, too raw from his screaming. So, Four shakes his head.

He wants to be better. He wants to control his powers; he doesn’t want to be scared. He does not want to be the disappointment to his father he currently is.

Snivelling in the doorway to the mausoleum, head aching, ghosts wailing around him in the darkness of night, Four wipes at the tears on his cheeks and he vows to try harder; be better, even if it scares him.


End file.
